Residents displaced by High Park fire hunger for news

Tears, cheers mix at evacuee meetings

Fearing that her home may have been destroyed in the High Park fire, Tracy DeFrancesco wipes away tears Monday after a resident meeting at The Ranch.
(
Jenny Sparks
)

People whose homes likely survived the High Park fire raging northwest of Loveland consoled close neighbors whose homes are presumed lost at gatherings in Loveland Monday.

Emergency workers engaged in the firefight joined them in tears at a morning briefing, following two days of evacuations from Rist Canyon, Poudre Canyon, Buckhorn Canyon, Redstone Canyon and the ridgeline neighborhoods between them.

By the second briefing for residents of the area on Monday afternoon, shock had worn away and an atmosphere of stoic acceptance had set in.

Evacuees' homes are in a 40,000-acre mosaic of scorched terrain and untouched meadows. Some are gone. Others await residents' return.

"I saw some structures burned, but I saw many, many more that were not," Larimer Sheriff Justin Smith told an afternoon gathering of about 600 people at the First National Bank Exhibition Hall at The Ranch in Loveland.

His listeners cheered.

Tough Questions

Smith and Rist Canyon Volunteer Fire Department Chief Bob Gann, himself a Rist Canyon resident, faced questions from residents lined up at two microphones in the spacious hall.

They sought reports on their homes in Young's Gulch, Poudre Park, Tip Top Road and dozens of other locations in the burn area.

"Have you been up Rist Creek Road?" a resident asked Gann.

"That's right behind my house," the chief replied. "We have not been able to get up there."

None of the residents has been notified, officially, of loss. But some have learned from Gann and other firefighters -- who are, after all, their neighbors -- that their homes did not survive.

"There were a lot of tears in there this morning," said Jim Key, whose home on Lost Wilderness Road likely was destroyed during the fire Saturday or Sunday.

"There was a lot of hope in there yesterday, but today? Tears."

'Pact With the Devil'

After the morning meeting, neighbors in the burn area mingled outside the Thomas McKee 4-H Building at The Ranch, a smaller venue for a smaller crowd.

Some wandered away to deliver sad news to friends and family via cellphone.

"We made a pact with the devil 28 years ago," said Tom Holtzer, who with his wife, Irene, owns a home on Cox Court off Rist Canyon Road. "Now, it might be time to pay up."

The Holtzers had been away from their home for three weeks and were returning home Sunday, driving across the eastern plains of Colorado as the smoke plume from the High Park fire came into view.

Cheryl Pyatt, right, comforts her daughter Char Lyons, left, after hearing their home may have been lost at a resident meeting at The Ranch Monday about the High Park fire.
(
Jenny Sparks
)

She and her daughter, who was in the house frantically grabbing the most precious of her parents' belongings, talked by phone as the couple drove westward.

'That's Christmas!'

"She said to me, 'I just walked by your recipe files. I have to take that. That's Christmas!'"

Tracy DeFrancesco and her husband, David Zents, had done all the right things to protect their home on Spring Valley Road. They trimmed all tree branches within 10 feet of the ground. They kept the grass short, green and well-watered.

But on Monday she could not know if the measures were enough.

"The map shows that the fire went right through our place," she said. "I've never seen a fire move that fast. It was just exploding. ... I only hope that no one goes in to look at my place and gets hurt."

Serenity Kay moved two years ago from eastern Canada to the Stove Prairie Ranch at the top of Rist Canyon.

The ranch was close to the point where lightning is thought to have struck late Friday, igniting the fuse for the High Park fire. Thus, she was among the first to evacuate on Saturday.

"We first saw the flames about 6 a.m.," she said. "We left about noon. I know there are a lot of houses that are gone."

Monday morning's meeting meant a somber reunion for Kay and some of her neighbors who lived further down Rist Canyon.

"They had helped us evacuate on Saturday," she said. "Now, they're here."

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